Strange Minds Think Alike / Anime & Manga

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• In the forty-fifth chapter of Asteroid in Love, Mira tells Ao she'd like something that the entire Earth Sciences Club can do for the School Festival, without dividing into astronomy and geology like in the previous year.^note The Earth Sciences clus is created from merging the club stubs of astronomy and geology clubs the previous year, and practically still divided that way. She suggests making a large exhibit that shows the different disciplines of the earth sciences, at which point Ao thinks Mira is still off. Later the day, the two called Mikage and Mari for ideas, and Mari's first idea... is exactly the same thing.
• Azumanga Daioh:
  • Yukari-sensei's 2nd-year students are discussing what to do for the Culture Fest, and Osaka suggests that they do a haunted house that's like a café, inverting an idea expressed earlier. Shortly, Kagura arrives and suggests the same thing, thinking it would be a "killer idea".
    Osaka: Ooh, the same wavelength!
    Kagura: Errr, same as what?
  • Also, Sakaki and Osaka manage to independently imagine Chiyo's father in the exact same way. (As a giant, floating orange cat thing.) Well, we hope it's their imagination.
  • At one point in the manga, Yukari stops in the middle of a lesson to muse about a tongue twister (in the English version, it's "She sells seashells"). Everyone looks confused... except Osaka, who nods knowingly.
  • The is also implied to be the reason why Osaka is so good at word puzzles and brain-twisters — the sideways logic patterns one usually has to take up to think of and solve them is just how she normally is.
• Bakuman。
  • Not long after the main characters' third series, PCP, begins, it becomes clear that the series needs to improve in order to compete with Crow and Natural+, but the main characters aren't sure where to focus their efforts. Mashiro (the artist), Takagi (the writer), Eiji (The Rival) and Hattori (Mashiro and Takagi's editor) all come to the conclusion that the art is where they most need to improve.
  • In Chapter 107, Mashiro, Eiji, Aoki, and Iwase all decide to do a romance for their respective oneshots.
  • When news hits that some people did a copycat "perfect crime" similar to one discussed (but never attempted) in PCP, Takagi is briefly struck with writer's block. In the end, Mashiro and Takagi come up with the same solution to get Takagi out of his rut and address their critics — have PCP deal with a copycat in-story.
  • Nanamine's one-shot, Classroom of Truth, seems like a ripoff of Mashiro and Takagi's The Two Earths, but Mashiro and Takagi both realize that since The Two Earths was never published, Nanamine came up with that idea by coincidence.
• During the climax of the fourth Case Closed movie, Detective Conan Film 04: Captured In Her Eyes, when a (currently amnesiac) Ran asks Conan why he's protecting her, he proclaims that he "loves her, more than any other person on this Earth". Once her memory returns, Ran comes to the conclusion that Conan was intentionally mimicking how they'd been told Ran's father proposed to her mother. Conan is just a little disgusted with himself to realize it was, in fact, this trope.
  • In the series proper, the fact that Kogoro and Eri actually are more alike then they're willing to admit (both preferring the same food, liking the same color, remembering their first date by dressing up in the clothes they wore, etc.) is used to show Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other.
• A Certain Magical Index: When Touma returns home with MISAKA in tow, carrying a slew of cans, Index gets more than a bit jealous. Aisa Himegami suggests, "Perhaps that is his fate. He raises flags with other people and goes down their story routes." Later, after saving MISAKA from the insane psychic known as Accelerator, Touma wakes up with his hand on her chest:
  Touma: Why am I experiencing such a happy event? I don't remember raising any flags like this at all.
• In Classi9, when Liszt revealed Wagner laughed when he was drunk, Mozart and Bach's automatic reaction is to dismiss the thought as they considered it as Nightmare Fuel. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky's reaction was to come up with a plan on the spot to get him drunk, namely dousing him in alcohol, without exchanging a word.
• Death Note:
  • During their tennis match, Light and L have almost identical internal monologues, without communicating. Of course the point of this is to illustrate that the two are Mirror Characters.
  • Light constantly pats himself on the back for choosing the morally uptight Teru Mikami to act on his behalf: anything Light can't do on his own or say aloud, Mikami does, and without even asking. Naturally, being the egotist he is, Light never considered the possibility that someone that acts so much like him could be a problem. Oops.
• The Dangers in My Heart:
  • All the way back in the first chapter/episode, Yamada gave Ichikawa a family-sized bag of potato chips to throw in the trash on her way out of the library. Ichikawa kept the bag, in a vinyl bag no-bag no less. Later on Ichikawa bought her a bottle of Milk Tea, Yamada's favorite drink, to help cheer her up when she feels guilty over the two getting unknowingly left behind by their study group at the transit. Flashing forward to Chapter 64/episode 15, Yamada is revealed to keep the same bottle against her window. Something she doesn't not want him to know
  • In Chapter/Karte 45 (Episode 10), Ichikawa is meeting Yamada in Shibuya during the holidays to exchange manga (It ended up being a date in all but name). Ichikawa arrives 30 minutes early to make sure it was the right meeting spot and totally not because he got excited (As he tells himself...) Yamada arrived even earlier than him, and she tells him that she also wanted to make sure they had the right spot. (Even though she set their meeting up.)
• At the beginning of one episode of Di Gi Charat (1999), Dejiko is plotting to make a naughty doujinshi using two of the store's customers (both named Takuro). Gema, seeing the look on her face, tells her that if she's thinking of making a naughty doujinshi featuring those two, she'd better not. Dejiko is thoroughly pissed that he was able to read her thoughts so exactly.
• In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Bulma was gathering the Dragon Balls so she could make herself five years younger. The plot is kicked off when Freeza has his minions steal the Dragon Balls, not so he could wish for immortality, but because...he wants to make himself five centimeters taller. Both of them also give the same reason for not making a more drastic change, saying that it wouldn't look "natural" (Bulma says people would assume she got plastic surgery, Freeza wants to pass it off as natural growth).
• In Fate/Zero, Caster's "Mental Pollution" trait means he literally cannot understand or be understood by someone who is not as reprehensible and depraved as he is. Ryuunosuke, his Master for the Fourth Grail War, relates so well that they can hold (strangely meta) philosophical debates on the nature of God in between committing atrocities with small children and summoning eldritch horrors. Justified since Ryuunosuke performed the summoning ritual without a catalyst, thus, the ritual summoned a Servant whose mind-set best matched Ryuunosuke's.
• In all of Full Metal Panic!, the only person who actually seems to think alike and see eye-to-eye with Sousuke seems to be Atsunobu Hayashimizu, the president of the Student Council. The guy agrees with Sousuke's weird, outlandish conclusions, and supports his violent, destructive ways.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: When asked to think of a test for new Brigade members, Kyon comes up with catching 101 hamsters. When it turns out that's exactly the test Haruhi wanted to use, down to the number of hamsters, Kyon worries that his brainwashing must be almost complete.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, Hayate and Hinagiku independently decide to nickname Athena "A-tan," which is actually longer when written out in kanji than Athena. In a twist, this is Played for Drama as hearing Hinagiku call her A-tan stirs up Athena's latent emotions regarding Hayate.
• In one episode of the Quirky Work Ippatsu Kiki Musume, Kunyan wakes up with her hair caught in the drain of a bathtub filled with water, unable to free herself and facing imminent drowning. She "realizes" that since people take in air through their mouths and release it through their butts, she should be able to reverse the process and breathe through her butt. Naturally, it doesn't work. Her friend Linda enters, realizes what's happening and...attempts CPR on Kunyan's butt, having come to the same conclusion. Their friend Naja, supposedly the Only Sane Woman of the group, also comes to the same conclusion, and runs off to get an enema in order to help save Kunyan.
• In Isekai Quartet, a crossover, this happens when Tanya and her group introduce themselves. Ainz and Kazuma have the exact same reaction, with the only difference being Kazuma says it out loud, whereas Ainz just thinks it.
• In one chapter of Medaka Box, Nabeshima is fighting Myouga Unzen, a character who can only speak and understand a numbers-based language. At one point, Nabeshima comments that Myouga is going to "pull a Dragon Ball" and get a speed boost by dropping her weights. Myouga picks out the words "dragon ball" and guesses that Nabeshima thinks she's going to get a speed boost.
  • Later in the chapter, Nabeshima manages to get the upper hand (while twisting one of Myouga's taunts), and Myouga exclaims "You damn cheater!" One of Nabeshima's classmates asks Medaka (who learned how to translate Myouga's language) if Myouga just said "You cheater!", simply because everyone who fights Nabeshima says that at some point.
• In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Nozaki, Sakura and Mikoshiba exhibit varying skill in their drawing abilities, yet when it comes to drawing buildings, all three of them draw the exact same crude figure of a house. It is later revealed in Chapter 36 that even Wakamatsu has the same idea when it comes to drawing a house!
• Nagasarete Airantou: Mei-Mei thinks the animal costumes she made are cute but they are based on the realistic animals from outside. Tohno says that it's even giving her nightmares and recommends not taking them to the village. Ayane took the lion costume and accidentally scares some villagers while trying to see Ikuto. After she's caught she says she finds it cute too to Mei-Mei's delight. Tohno just says both of them are weird.
• One Piece:
  • During Fishman Island, when Luffy manages to smuggle Princess Shirahoshi out of the castle, having hid her in her pet shark's mouth. Brook argues that since he only saw Luffy and Megalo leave the castle, Luffy couldn't have kidnapped her. King Neptune immediately suggests that he might have hid Shirahoshi in Megalo's mouth. Everyone in his court bursts out laughing at the incredulity of the thought.
  • Zoro and Luffy seem to follow the same "logic" at times:
    • In Fishman Island, Luffy explains why he doesn't want to be a hero by claiming that, if there was a huge piece of meat, a hero would share it and a pirate would eat it, and Luffy wants to eat meat! Near the end of the arc, Zoro applies the exact same logic, only substituting grog instead of meat without hearing Luffy say it before. Nami, who hears both explanations, is not amused.
    • In Skypiea, when the Straw Hats are forcibly split up, Zoro's group swings across vines several times to explore the nearby jungle. Every time they do so, Zoro gives a "Tarzan yell", to Nami's disbelief. Meanwhile, Luffy's group is fighting Satori in the jungle, and Luffy ends up swinging from a vine once or twice. What does he do? Give a Tarzan yell. Possibly Usopp as well, since he named his new grappling-hook-swing-rope invention the "Usopp AaahAhAaahh", but it's unknown if he planned that name from the beginning or was inspired by Luffy's Tarzan call.
    • An example that occurred near the beginning of the series: Luffy and Zoro both meet Gaimon, a man who's stuck in a treasure chest. Both of them independently arrive at the question "Are you a boxed son?". This is a pun on the Japanese concept of 'boxed daughters', referring to the practice of sheltering girls, but considering it's associated with social criticism and most definitely doesn't refer to a literal box, it's a really stupid pun. Luffy and Zoro were completely serious.
    • In Little Garden, when Zoro is about to be turned into a human candle by Mr. 3, he suggests to Brogy that they chop their legs off in order to escape. Much, much later, on Whole Cake Island, Luffy is imprisoned and nailed to a wall by Big Mom's subordinates. He tries to escape by tearing his hands off, and suggests that Nami do the same.
  • Oden and Whitebeard having the exact same reaction of utter disgust when asked by Toki to act as tour guides for her in Wano.
• In the Proverbs episode of Strawberry Marshmallow, in anticipation of Miu's arrival through the window, the other girls guess what she's going to scream as she comes in. Chika just about nails it.
• At the beginning of one episode of Tamako Market, Dela sees a Jizo statue and wonders aloud if if can be used as a bludgeoning weapon. At the end of the episode, another character from the same island as Dela sees the statue and wonders the exact same thing.
• Toradora! has, at the start of an episode, Ryuji having a Catapult Nightmare in which Taiga agrees to marry him. However, because Taiga refers to him as "her dog" much of the time, the dream features him getting a dog house, while his mother (dressed as a dog) shows off all of Taiga's puppies. Taiga, also dressed as a dog, tells Ryuji they're his, which is when he wakes up. Moments later, Taiga tells Ryuji "I had an unpleasant dream. You were a dog, and the dog was my husband. Anyway, it was the worst dream ever."

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